Through The Night Dark And Drear
by Bennybunny
Summary: She can't vanquish a king and go back to being a normal girl. Not when she's tasted the hot power within her, felt the crackle of the magic in the world, got addicted to the delight of hoarding stories within herself, and, at long last, awakened the hunger for capturing pretty things. And he is such a pretty thing. The prettiest she's ever seen.
1. The Way Back In

Chapter One - The Way Back In

The thing no one mentions at the end of an epic book, where the hero accomplished great deeds in a land of magic and wonder, is that once they go home everything's changed and home doesn't feel like home at all.

Everything seems dull and mundane after braving trolls and slaying dragons. And the hero will keep trying to make sense of their world, of why it's changed, only to realise they were the one who'd changed and the entire world was remade in their eyes.

It took Sarah years to come to that conclusion. Years where she went through her days studying literature in college, trying to recapture the magic of the Labyrinth in ancient tomes and flowery language penned to entice long dead lovers. Years of playing lady #3 or baker's wife in drama class - she who had once vanquished a king.

And now back in her father's house, fairy tales and dolls banished to a tight corner of her room, making way for books upon books critically analysing other books, she felt the weight of all those stories, all those lives long ago lived and returned home and – now she knew it for herself – unfulfilled to their last.

Irene was glad for the help now that Toby was 5, and her father was genuinely happy to have her home. And for all the time he'd spent clutched in the Goblin King's arms Toby was a surprisingly normal child, obsessed with a cartoon called Darkwing Duck and delighted that Sarah didn't contradict him when it came to his belief that animals could talk and fight for the greater good.

And she'd contemplate pursuing a master's degree as she took her daily walk to the park, her steps slow and patient as Merlin, now old and frail, struggled to keep up.

It was beneath the dappled light filtered down from the canopy of leaves above her as she laid under a great tree, Merlin dozing at her side, that Sarah would dream.

Sarah would dream of what-ifs.

Sarah would dream of the strength she possessed as a young girl, the strength to best a Labyrinth and fell a king.

Sarah would dream of that furious hot power coursing through her veins, the taste of magic and blood like hot embers on her tongue.

Sarah would dream.

And Sarah would hunger.

The last time Sarah went into the Labyrinth she had made a wish.

But that wouldn't do now, for wishes had power and a beggar entered the Labyrinth as a supplicant.

She had left as a conqueror, she wouldn't go back as less.

So she took to her books for she had learned it well: she may not have the power of a Goblin King, but women since time immemorial had had power of their own, as maiden and mother and crone.

She was not quite any of them, no longer a maiden, not yet a mother, while her life blood was slow and ready for the end in her veins like the crone, who she was also not.

But perhaps that was what being a woman truly was: being all and none at the same time.

Through heavy tomes and dusty libraries, with hasty scribbles like spiky thorns she noted down what power was. And thus armed she searched through the earth from which life grew.

She looked into the musty places in which moss gathered.

She looked into the decay from which mushrooms grew.

She looked through the patterns the frost left with its sharp freezing talons.

She looked through the crooked black branches of the trees, reaching to the sky like arthritic fingers.

She looked at the prey and hunter, the new life so easily taken, the hot blood so easily spilled.

She looked into the dark fog of the night, the deepest shadows, and the emptiest silences.

And she found her way back in.


	2. Through a Spyglass Darkly

Chapter Two - Through a Spyglass Darkly

She stood outside the Labyrinth, watched it spread in twists and turns, its earthy tones dry and crumbling under the baking sun.

She wondered if things had changed since she was last there. If what she last saw had been distorted by her youthful eyes, and it would be different now. Realer. As real as it could be, at least.

She wondered if the funny little goblins were now lurid creatures out of medieval bestiaries.

Whether the sparkling fairies were macabre confections of nightmarish exoskeleton.

Whether he, himself, was different.

But a trickster would always be a trickster, so on that, at least, she could count on.

As soon as she entered his Labyrinth he would know she was there. So she didn't.

Instead she took a spyglass from her bag. A thing of gilded beauty and hard metal, extending as far as her ravenous curiosity.

She looked through it and searched the castle beyond the Labyrinth, its empty entrances and deserted windows.

She was about to give up when a quick turn of the wrist pointed her spyglass at the sun, blinding her.

With stars bursting in the hot darkness of her closed eyes, she waited a moment and looked again.

And there he was: pale, and strange, and fey.

Lean muscle and stringy tendon, with nothing left to spare, a thing of wild beauty just sitting at a window.

He was staring absently into his Labyrinth, so otherworldly and exquisite in his oddity, and Sarah wondered, in all the vanity and self-centeredness of her young years, if he thought of her.

It pleased her to think that she still tormented him, obsessed him, consumed him.

The sun caught the bright gold of her spyglass and Jareth sharply turned his head towards her, his focus intent like a predator of the skies.

Sarah placed her spyglass back in the bag and retreated. It wouldn't do for him to see her now.

She left as a conqueror and she would return as a conqueror.

And a conqueror needed more power than she currently had.

Beyond the entrance to the Labyrinth, after a dry dusty walk, vegetation started growing, becoming thicker and a deeper green, and soon she stood before a dark wood.

Witches made their home in dark woods. When their power was too vast, when their knowledge was too deep and they unsettled the men in power.

She-wolves lurked in the dark woods, glittering eyes in the darkness, hungry mouths and the violence of a wolf mother protecting her pups. They walked around careless of their nakedness, their pelt tied around their waists, hairy skin licked clean of the blood of the men who dared to venture too far in.

Water nymphs inhabited the green stagnant pools, their long hair floating around them like swirls of ink, their eyes wide and innocent, their plump arms enticing men to the drowning depths, just like their mermaid sisters did at sea.

There were wood nymphs with skins that looked like deep brown bark and who waited for a weary traveller, a careless man trampling through the bright green foliage, who would rest for a moment and be strangled by her vines, soon vanished within the confines of her deep roots.

There were boar-women who fussed among the dark earth and waited for the hunters to come with all their eagerness for hot blood, juicy meat, and a dying breath fogging the frigid morning air, only to be gored to pieces and left to rot and sprout meaty mushrooms which the boar women devoured with lusty hunger.

There were spider-women weaving ghostly webs of glittering silk in dark caves, a beautiful gem in their centre, waiting for the greedy hands of men who, consumed by the galaxy of light shards the gem scattered around the cave, became blinded to the trap that awaited them and were thus siphoned of their filling, delicately liquefied by a poisonous biting kiss.

There were troll women who shook the woods with their heavy steps, great oaks shaking like young saplings, as they looked for bands of thieves and made hearty stews out of them, marrow slurped and skulls emptied as they supped.

The woods had always been a seat of female power.

And Sarah would make this seat hers.


End file.
